Greening the Red, White, and Blue

The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America

Thomas Jundt

Description

In popular imagination, environmentalism is often linked to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the political activism of the 1960s and '70s that moved increasing numbers of Americans to insist on a better quality of life-open spaces, clean air and water, beautification campaigns. But these interpretations have obscured the significant origins of environmentalism as a moral and intellectual broadside against the growing power of corporate capitalism, both domestically and in the postwar liberal international order the United States was enacting abroad.

In Greening the Red, White, and Blue, Thomas Jundt shows how many Americans came to view powerful corporations and a federal government bent on economic growth as threats to human health and the environment. Fallout from atomic testing, air and water pollution, the proliferation of pesticides and herbicides-all connected to the growing dominance of technology and corporate capitalism in American life-led a variety of constituencies to seek solutions in what came to be known as environmentalism. In addition to political and legal campaigns to effect change, an alternative form of civic participation emerged beginning in the late-1940s as growing numbers of citizens turned to what they deemed environmentally friendly consumption practices. The goal of this politically charged consumption was not only to protect themselves and their families from harm, but also to achieve social change at a time when many believed the government was placing the desires of business before the needs of its citizens. Politicians responded to the growing environmental concerns of middle class Americans, but, in the end, continual political compromises with corporate power meant weak laws and lax enforcement. Many citizens sought refuge in an alternative "green" marketplace-including organic foods, natural-fiber clothing, alternative energy, and everyday products designed to have minimal environmental impact. In doing so, they attempted to create a community for those who shared their concerns and frustrations, as well as their vision for a different American Way.

Thomas Jundt's work highlights the intertwining of consumerism and environmentalism amidst the growing power of corporate capitalism and government in postwar America.

Greening the Red, White, and Blue

The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America

Thomas Jundt

Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Shopping As If Their Lives (and the Planet's) Depended on It

Part I: A New Era 1. "Sons of Bitches": Sources of Postwar Anxiety 2. Green Consumption in a Dangerous World 3. Downwinders 4. Chemicals and Romance

Part II: A New Response 5. "A Ground Swell of Public Indignation" 6. The 'New' Conservation 7. "Striking Back at the Goddam Sons of Bitches" 8. Green Consumption Goes Mainstream

Conclusion: "The Clock is Ticking"NotesIndex

Greening the Red, White, and Blue

The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America

Thomas Jundt

Author Information

Thomas Jundt is Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Brown University

Greening the Red, White, and Blue

The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America

Thomas Jundt

Reviews and Awards

"Thomas Jundt's new book...show[s] that many Americans rejected the consumers' republic bequeathed to them at the end of the War, and that many more of them were anxious and discomfited by the dominant position of big business in post-war American life...Essential reading for historians with a teaching or research interest in consumer and/or environmental politics. All historians of post-war American life will profit from exposure to its argument about the function of these arenas of social and political action as spaces of dissent in a profoundly constrained ideological climate and historical context. This is a major study of the possibilities and limits of consumer resistance."--History

"Greening the Red, White, and Blue carefully demonstrates that an environmental consciousness developed earlier than is commonly assumed, in the postwar years rather than the 1960s. By examining reactions to atomic testing, pesticides, concerns about air pollution, and increasing corporate power, Thomas Jundt expertly traces the many paths that Americans took on the way to environmental consciousness. This book nicely shows the ways in which American consumers were both complicit and critical in dealing with the environmental challenges of the postwar world." --Lawrence Glickman, author of Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America

"Insightful and nuanced, Thomas Jundt's Greening the Red, White, and Blue reveals critical new perspectives on the roots of modern environmentalism and the complicated relationships between capitalism and love of nature that shaped the movement. By carefully framing his study of environmental activism within the context of Cold War anxieties about the growth of big business and big government Jundt greatly enriches our understandings of how environmentalism in all its forms is always as much about people and culture as it is about nature." --Andrew Kirk, author of Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism

Greening the Red, White, and Blue

The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America

Thomas Jundt

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